God founded His good rules for living on ten basic commands. Any people who dedicate themselves to keeping the heart and soul of these commands will find God’s good-life… a life of stability, wisdom, happiness, and wholeness… not a perfect life, because people still battle selfishness, and God often transforms us through suffering, but a blessed one. Now, I say “keeping the heart and soul of these commands” in order to create contrast with the way sinners tend to keep rules… outmaneuvering the intent of rules while giving the vain appearance of being righteous.
Let’s consider the third commandment. Exodus 20:7 reads, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.”
When I grew up, kids got their mouths washed out with soap for using vulgar language… even if their parents used it. Believe it or not, however, the worst words on the No No List involved the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To take up the name of the Lord as either a swear word, or for no purpose but “filler,” was a serious sin.
This included, but was not limited to sound-alikes, like Geeze, GeeWiz, Golly, Golly Gee Wilikers, Gosh, and let’s not forget the old standby Gosh Darn it. If we really wanted to outmaneuver the law, we’d shout, “Darn my socks!” What adult could hold us accountable for using darn in its most exacting sense? Did they want to argue with Webster? That certainly didn’t work out too well for the Devil![1]
The list got even longer. We had to be careful of terms that referenced God issues like damnation, the cross, and communion wafers… so blasted, bloody, and “Christ on a Cracker” were also out. Don’t say these words or allow the spirit that led to them to control your tongue. In fact, I hope you didn’t read those out loud… or move your lips when you read silently. I was careful to even type them with my eyes closed so I didn’t accidentally think them out loud.
So, as a kid, we felt pretty good about ourselves when we learned to swerve wide of such utterances. We were keeping the third great commandment… unlike those loose lipped sows and boars around us. Nothing like a mouth full of Lifebuoy soap to bring on a case of holier-than-thou. Now that lifebuoy is banned in several countries, I’m waiting to get in on the class action lawsuit against the parents of the 70s. Yes, most of us have already inherited everything they had, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Anyway, getting back to my main point, imagine my dismay when I discovered that there was a lot more to living out the third commandment than avoiding even the appearance of a vain utterance of God’s name. There are many circumstances in which we take up the Lord’s name in vain without speaking a word.
When I was 18, I was driving my car down Route 495 coming from New Hampshire to my home a little south of Boston. I was doing about 100 mph. Here, “about” means a little over not a little under. I was in a hurry. In my back window, I had a fake vanity plate that had the Christian fish <>< and the letters JESUS. Maybe it was just my own guilty inner voice talking, but I felt like the Lord said sharply, “Slow down! Drive Right! Or take the Jesus plate out of your back window!!!” I am ashamed to say that I immediately pulled over on the highway, removed the Jesus plate, and continued flying south at a little more than a little over 100 mph. Did I mention that I was in a hurry?
We could easily replace this story with those brandishing a “Honk If You Love Jesus” bumper sticker who curse out some blessed driver honking the love of Jesus to them. We could replace it with our bad behavior at work, when everyone knows that we are a believer. Ditto among our neighbors and family.
At 16, I discovered that I could twist my hand inside a soda machine and pop sodas out for free. I didn’t think of it as stealing. It was a gift to me for being so cooooool… and a great way to impress my thirsty but poor friends… until my football coach caught me at it that is. He said, “Andrew, what are you doing? Aren’t you a Christian? Do Christians steal now?” Suddenly, my explanations of how it wasn’t really stealing rang hollow, even in my own ears.
When you read, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain,” Don’t just imagine loose lips sinking spiritual ships, hear the words as, “You shall not wear the name of the Lord in such a way that you bring shame on the reputation of the Lord.”
Thus, none of us come out of this devotion unscathed. If we truly saw ourselves through God’s eyes we’d weep for the unknown ways we shame the name of Jesus by simply “being our bad self” among those who know we are Christians less for our love[2] than for our chitter chatter and Jesus paraphernalia.
Thankfully, in His grace and mercy, God spares us the worst of it, by going gently with us, changing us little by little like a tender father, only giving us a good spanking once in a while when we need it most.
The secret in all this is to respond well to His nudges… His Word… His periodic revelations of us to us… not by taking the Jesus plate out of our rear window, but by leaving it there, slowing down, driving right, and giving a blessing rather than a cursing the person who cuts us off or drives too slowly in front of us. They are not an obstacle to our purpose, but in Jesus, ARE our purpose.
~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1] See the story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” by Stephen Vincent Benét. If you prefer, you can watch the 1936 movie by the same name.
[2] John 13:35 says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
